Prolog
There are many realms out there. Dimensions, parallel worlds, alternate realities, membranes, or multiverse. Whatever they are called the concept is the same. Worlds like one another but different in some fundamental way.
They can be broadly classified into types. Normal, Sci-fi, Magical, Natural, and Divine.
Normal is the most common with set rules that are unchanging and the beings on them slowly bettering themselves. Most eventual stagnate and disappear leaving ancient artifacts for futures races to discover and wonder at.
Sci-fi follow rules that as they are better understood can be change though massive effort of many people to change them. The beings in this world often ascend to energy beings that become other world’s fundamental forces and concepts.
Magical worlds allow rules to be changed by individual force of will. The population of these worlds go on to create new worlds with new rules to govern them as powerful gods.
Natural worlds create ever evolving rules that change as they grow giving rise to new species, monsters and spirits to populate new worlds.
Divine worlds are where the ascended beings live. Spirts, gods, demons, and other beings of power dwell there.
The problem is those with power do nothing worthwhile at best and often torment the weak at worst. While those without are helpless before the divine or are doomed to stagnate and die. This is a horrid system we live in thinks Ris as she flees.
Ris is a goddess of games. What better way to challenge oneself and have fun at the same time by playing games. She even came up with a way to make powerful beings that both have the power, will to use it and most importantly the good character to use it for the betterment of others.
Yes, she thinks, a perfect plan to create a gaming world of infinite possibilities, infinite ways to power, yet with controlled limits. Always a new challenge to keep the races on it ever striving for power and yet be responsible in its usage.
Like many perfect plans this one was working wonderfully until the enemy showed up to ruin it completely. She pauses a moment to cast an intricate magical incantation. Hundreds of complex glowing magical circles appear around her and turn like gears in a clock. A multitude of chanting voices and fluctuating energy fields humming with divine melody can be heard as the miracle is cast. There that should keep those meatheads occupied for a bit, she thinks to herself.
The trap she just created could end a world or confine a demon king for eternity but sadly will keep the enemy only contained for a short while. Any one of the enemy she could beat easily. She’d lay even odds on her versus 10 of them. However what she faces is a multitude of the most powerful beings in the universe.
A pantheon of gods. The name given to a group of gods who work toward a common goal is her enemy. Their goal is simple; become the gods of the world that Ris has brought forth. They are too lazy to make their own worlds and jealous enough to take worlds created by better gods as their own through violence.
Ris of course was prepared for upstart gods challenging her but she didn’t think they would come in such numbers and work together all at once. She is sure they will be back stabbing each other and breaking into smaller pantheons once they are done with her. However right now she faces the combined might of hundreds of gods.
The odds don’t daunt her though. She is use to overcoming impossible odds and winning. After all she beat her twin brother Tet all the time in games. Of course he won just as many. Still that was the fun in playing them. She wishes he were here right now.
Sadly he is too far away to help and has his own problems on a world in a state of Armageddon. No she will have to come up with a winning strategy by herself.
The short game is lost to her. The enemy pantheon has too much power to go head to head with and she can’t hide from them since she glows with power. She’ll need to fight this in the long game and do so from complete stealth.
She thinks of the goals she must achieve.
* Live
* Keep the rules of her world intact
* Ditch most of her power so she can hide
* Get a new game piece on the board to allow for her come back
As long as she is alive she can maintain the rules of the world. She can also get rid of most of her power through a method the oldest gods use to end their own existence. The hard part is finding the right game piece, getting it setup without notice and also ending herself in a way that will allow for her eventual resurrection.
She considers all the angles. The plan is a complete gamble, relies on improbable odds and the reactions of gods and people she has never met to win. But luck is always on the gaming goddess’s side. Besides she’s never been this excited by a challenge before. The high stakes, the odds to overcome, the complete unknown all speak to her gaming existence.
Well the upstarts are getting restless and she has nothing better to try so may as well roll the dice and hope for the best she quips.
As the enemy gods break from their confinement and charge she casts the miracle of ending. This is the final spell a god casts to destroy their own identity. Of course power can never be destroyed only moved so the spell is also a death wish for the god casting it.
She wishes for most of her power to go into powering this worlds rules. It’s unlikely any god will take the time and effort to dismantle or change them. They will simply work around them as they fight one another.
She also makes her end a spectacular explosion. Drawing from her knowledge of gaming cg effects it truly is breathtakingly huge, flashy and distracting. It’s not just one explosion but a multitude of explosions. An energy missile massacre which home in and explode on nearby gods with multicolored particle effects and shrapnel that cross dimensions.
Most of the shrapnel rain down on the world below. She is sure they will be coveted to make powerful weapons and magical artifacts. Seven of them are a bit more special than the others. Within those seven pieces of divine essence are her mind and memories. When brought together and empowered will bring her back into existence. Until then they will simply each be a divine stone of dual nature.
The sparks from the explosion also have a purpose. Each will cross the void and bring back special souls. Souls looking for a new world, souls with potential, souls from a normal world to give power to and begin her grand experiment. These souls will serve as both decoys and allies for the game piece.
Seven special souls will be brought back as well. One for each of the duel nature virtue/sin stones. Seven chances to have a game piece. The game piece with the most potential shall be contacted by the smallest fragment of her personality she dared to leave active. A proto goddess, her daughter she supposes, that will guide the game piece.
She feels her thoughts dim and become divided as she sees her vision split into seven views slowly falling to the world below…
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[Who am I? What am I?]
Oriana.
[What does that mean?]
Oriana. Blond. Golden. Dawn. Sunrise. Rising. New. Beginning. Oriana.
[Is that my name?]
…
[What should I do? Where should I go?]
…
[What do I remember?]
Pain. Loss. Sadness. Destruction. Emptiness. Loneliness.
A cry for help. A wish. A prayer. A hope. A chance.
[Stop, stop, it hurts!] The intensity of the last emotions she felt overwhelm her. No not her emotions. Another’s emotions, someone she was close too.
She can’t remember who they were. But she remembers the final wish they had. To find someone special. Someone that can help. Someone that can be a hero to a goddess.
[Another god perhaps?]
No that would be too obvious. They need to be someone who is weak but can defy the gods themselves she feels.
[How can someone weak defeat gods?]
She does not know. But she must find them. She must guide them. She must grow them.
[So perhaps someone who can fight the impossible. To grow in the darkest of places.]
They must also be good. Just and yet merciful. Protect the weak even when they are weak themselves. To empower the weak and guide them from darkness.
A person who is a guiding light in the dark. Who grows strong in the dark. Who has no power but can take on the most powerful of beings. Who makes the weak strong and who guides the strong to be good. Who makes the evil and powerful tremble in fear.
[Yes that is the type of person I need to find and guide.]
As her thoughts become less fragmented she notices a world below her.
[I may as well start here for my search.]
She descends to the world below and begins her search.
…
Several months of searching and she has found no one. She finds all kinds of weak people but they all are just that, weak. They are not bad people or good people really. They just do what they can to survive and if they have a bit extra, help those around them.
She does find a news article about a man named Batman. At first she thinks this is exactly who she needs. However she soon realizes he is just a fictional person and only exists in fiction called ‘comic books’.
Well the concept is on this world. Maybe she can find someone like that here. But where to look… She has seen no evidence of real life super vigilantes. Nor any powerful enemies needing such heroes.
Then she sees something interesting on a public TV. What a wonderful invention she thinks to bring so much information easily to so many. Even better they often show powerful leaders, which is one of the criteria she is after. Mostly the leaders shown have few if any of the other qualities she needs disappointingly.
This time is different the news cast is interviewing someone who has done great things with so little. He might be the one she can guide to her world. She has to hurry though he does not have long to live.
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A pale corpse of a man lays on a bed; shrunken to a bare ninety pounds due to Cachexia. If he wasn’t breathing rapidly and with a distinctive sound anyone looking at him would assume he had already passed on.
With the interview over he has nothing left to do but die he thinks. He’s had a distinctive breathing pattern often known as a death rattle for several days. Most go unconscious and die within two or three days but somehow he’s still conscious and mostly lucid.
The glowing golden ball in front of his fading vision seems to indicate the lucid part is going away though.
[Remember] whispers a woman’s voice.
Well why not? Might as well have his life flash before him as he dies.
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A blow strikes his cheek. Followed by another on the other cheek.
“You listen to me boy we’ll have none of that in my house!” The man says as he hits the boy again.
The boy says nothing. Anything he says will only enrage his father more. He merely asked if there was a God. After all if God was all powerful, all knowing, all perfect, all seeing and the embodiment of all that was good then why is the world like it is?
A perfect example is of this man beating his child bloody for merely asking a question. A good god would stop this if he had the power. If he was powerless or uncaring then there would be no point in following such a god. Even worse the distilled wisdom of such a god recorded in the religious text was that the correct response to this question was hitting the child for questioning his belief.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
No if such a god existed he would not be worthy of being worshipped. With the multitude of religions that disagreed with each other and proclaimed each followed the sole true word of God seem to indicate such a being as unlikely to be real.
At twelve years old the boy already has reason enough to figure out that an adult proclaiming his imaginary friend is real and he’ll kill anyone that disagrees with him as silly.
“Well it must be that school that is filling your head with these lies of the devil. I’ll have my wife home school you and your sister in the proper ways.” He says this as if his wife is not there looking at all of this happening. The boy can’t blame his mother. She is often the victim of such abuse as well.
The boy thinks he’ll need to tutor his sister so she doesn’t become stupid. He can already see how smart she is. Since she is six years old he can teach her what he knows and in six years he’ll be an adult and maybe be able to get her out of this situation.
The boy hides his thoughts and tutors his sister in secret for four years. He tries to take much of the punishment as well. Always claiming he is the one who broke the dish while washing it, or he was the one that brought home a book about evolution.
In truth he did bring home the book but only because his sister insisted as she wanted to know the truth behind it by following the sources referenced in the other books she read. Her brother was so proud of her for following sources and learning the truth herself instead of just blindly accepting the information told by others.
At sixteen he worked many odd jobs to earn money for lawyer fees and move out expenses he’ll have in two years. Home schooling was mostly just reading verses in the good book and reciting them from memory to his male parent which didn’t take much time. He refused to call him father any longer. His male parent had never read the book so he could pretty much say anything religious sounding. Often he would quote famous atheists or movie quotes he heard from his coworkers much to his amusement.
This day as he returned home he heard a commotion coming from inside. Followed by a scream and a gun shot. He rushed inside to see his enraged father standing over his mother, who was bleeding on the ground, with a gun in his hand.
Forgetting his earlier resolution he says, “Father what have you done?”
“This is for our own good. This world is pure evil and we must go to God’s side to join his fight against this evil now!”
The young man can see the glint of madness in his father’s eye as his father points the gun at his weeping sister.
“NOOOO!” The young man rushes his father and struggles for the gun. Furniture is overturned as they tumble around trying to wrest the gun from each other. The sister recovering from the shock runs to the kitchen to call emergency services for police and ambulances.
After a bit his sister returns with a broom held at the ready. But she is lost what to do as her brother and father are moving around so much she can’t hit just one. It is a moot point as a moment later the gun goes off again.
The young man grabs the gun and rolls off his father. He stands up quickly, points the gun at his father and wondering who was shot. His father does not get up and the young man checks himself quickly. No bullet holes.
“Sis help mom, I’ll look after father.” His sister gets some towels and applies pressure to the wound on her mother.
After a bit of thinking he decides to tie up his father and see if he can stop the bleeding. In a few minutes the police arrive quickly followed by firemen. He wonders why firemen would show up but realizes they too have some medical equipment and must have been closer than an ambulance.
His father and mother are taken to the hospital but the looks on the faces of the medical personal makes him think that neither will survive. The police question him and his sister for much of the night before letting them sleep in one of the holding cells at the station. They were not under arrest and the holding cell door was left open. The officers just felt that children shouldn’t stay in their house that night.
In the days that follow the young man got his desire to be free of his parents. Neither survived the night. Also no charges were filed as his father was known to be somewhat of a crazy and he was hard working and respected young man.
Some talk was heard of taking them to an orphanage but the young man convinced them he could take care of himself and his sister. His sister enrolled in public school. He began working 60 and 80 hour weeks at many part time jobs to save up money for his sister’s college and to pay for food and rent.
Seven years pass and his sister is thinking where to go for college. Not just any college but some of the best there are and maybe on a scholarship as well. This is good he thinks. He hasn’t been able to save much. With no high school, or even Jr high, his job prospects are abysmal. He makes enough to make sure his sister has everything she needs to succeed and not much else.
He did attempt to apply for various welfare but as his parents birthed him at home and never got a birth certificate so he couldn’t even apply. Luckily his mother had complications with his sister’s pregnancy and gave birth to her in a hospital. With this record and as her legal guardian he applied for her birth certificate so she could get some assistance and more importantly go to school.
All is going well enough but he feels tired all the time. When he starts to have pain in his abdomen and urinating blood he decides he can spend some of his money on a doctor’s visit. It’s quickly found he has cancer of the kidney. A relatively easily treated and survivable cancer. Well this is true if you have the money or health insurance to get treatment that is.
They even have a vaccine for it now given to young children to prevent it and many other cancers. Once you have the cancer it’s too late for the vaccine to work though. His parents being who they were never gave their children vaccines feeling they were against God’s design or caused the devil to have access to your soul or something. He does make sure his sister gets it and all the other vaccines available. She needs most of them to go to college and they are just a few dollars a shot.
He tried to figure out a way to get treatment but with no education, no birth certificate, no parents insurance to use, no job that provided it, and no large sums of cash around he had no way to do so.
At this point he would’ve likely died in obscurity as just another poor dreg of society to be thrown away when no longer useful. However as he was leaving the doctor’s office he saw a woman with a small boy arguing with the check-in nurse.
Like him she and the boy had no insurance and couldn’t pay for the visit. The boy was obviously sick and needed medical treatment. This is just silly he thinks. Treatment should be given to all who need it regardless of background. The doctor could treat this boy here or he could treat the dozens of people who are going to catch the disease later from the untreated boy.
He goes up to the nurse and pays her the visit fee and gives the woman more for any medication they will have to buy later. He has no idea if it’s enough but hopefully it will be. The woman thanks him profusely.
As he goes home he thinks about this a lot. It’s just wrong that there isn’t any universal health care system open to all people. It’s also wrong that parents can deny their children basic education, medical treatment and generally be completely irrational in their choices made for their children.
Not one to just simply complain about the way things are or blame others he decides to do something about it. Over the next few years he spends his time talking to anyone who will listen. Hitch hiking across the country to give speeches, meet with government officials and simply being an example of all that is wrong with the current health system.
Of course as his fame grows he is offered money to get treated but by that time his cancer had metastasized and is a type that does not respond to chemo or radiation therapy. Instead he put all the money he made first into making sure his sister has enough for her education and living expenses then donated the rest to his charity to get universal healthcare passed.
Various religious organizations attacked him mercilessly. Proclaim him to be lazy, disliked in God’s eyes as he is poor and thus unfavored, uneducated, an illegal immigrant and so on. His work history, a simple DNA test proving he is related to his parents who have citizenship, and the fact after several speeches and large donations is no longer poor quickly prove those accusations wrong.
The uneducated part is true but only because those same religions teach that public schooling is evil and corruptive. His natural charisma, intelligence and rationality make him better received to the audiences then the half crazed religious apologists who have a ‘phd’ in a pseudoscience no one has heard of from a university operating out of a trailer.
The death threats he receives toward the end of his life makes him wonder if they are trying for morbid humor. Not really much scare factor threating someone who has accepted he’s going to die soon. There are also the letters stating he will burn in hell for his actions. He already lives his life in constant intense pain. It’s really not that bad. A nice hot sauna dip in a lake of fire might be a nice change of pace.
This brings him to the present where he remembers the interview he just gave. Over half the local governments have passed universal health care. The rest of the country is likely to follow soon and is a hot button topic for the next presidential election. Even some places have passed child protection from religion acts.
His sister is graduating from the university soon and plans on being a medical researcher. He’s sure he’s influenced her choices. She seems to generally want to do this though and he thinks a research doctor is a fine profession to have. This is his final thought as he passes away with a smile on his face at the age of 26.
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The young goddess Oriana grabs his soul as it leaves his broken body and quickly escapes this planet.
What a wonderful soul she thinks. Almost everything thing she has hoped for. The local gods even discarded him long ago as a worthless and perhaps dangerous soul. This is why she is sure his soul won’t be missed as she takes it from a planet with 8 billion people on it.
She wonders why the local gods are using such round about methods to gain power. Instead of just fighting directly they use a few choice words to their followers here and there to do their bidding. Convincing the populous, religious or not, that they don’t exist but still trying to sway them all toward their own side.
There must be some reason but it doesn’t matter to her. What matters to her is this wonderful soul she has found. The only thing he is lacking is his combat experience. His will, his resolution to do what is right, his defiance against the commandments of the local gods. A sick, poor, uneducated man took on the giant religious organizations and won while helping others, educating them, empowering them to be better than they were.
She feels a bit guilty taking his soul without asking him first though. She didn’t think about it in her excitement. She’ll apologize to him later and grant him a wish if she can to make up for it. She hopes he won’t hate her much.
She zips through the void between realities toward a world she has never seen but is sure that is there.